Savarna sailing blog

Mersin, Turkey

Posted at 10:39 PM, Jun. 5, 2010

Mersin is a major port for the province of Anatolia and we had a preconceived idea that this was a small port town – quite an incorrect view as the port is huge (some 15 ships at anchor waiting to enter port – or laid up) and a pretty average place for the rally yachts to tie up. The population is 700,000 and mostly Kurds we understand. There is a new marina under construction a few kilometres from the port and while the breakwater and pontoons are in place there are no services and the buildings are only just rising from the ground. They say that it will be finished for the 2011 EMYR - maybe! The 106 mile overnight passage was again largely a motoring exercise although we did get around 6 hours of slow sailing in during the night which certainly ensured we totally blew our scheduled arrival time by several hours.

In a small corner of the main port there is a small marina complex occupied by the local fishing fleet and they relocated themselves while we took over. As we were one of the last boats to arrive being late leaving Girne because of the fueliing delays we ended up alongside a pontoon that housed on the other side the first of several floating fish restaurants which the town is reportedly famous for. That might be the case but to be about 2 metres from the fish cleaning table – (all the guts were swept into the water at the stern of the boat) and about 3 meters from where the chef (?) was cooking the fish on a hot plate, with music going to very late was possibly not the best spot. We did however get to know the guys on board and they did provide us with plates of fish and calamari one night when we had a few people on for drinks.

Tied up next to fish restaurant - food prep table with blue legs, kitchen cooking on nearby white topped bench!

We did take a one day tour down the coast which was unremarkable and not worth doing really. There are many ruins along the coast and our final stop of the day was at bunch of ruins (we could be rocked out by the end of the rally!) that were around a huge “crater” in the ground. A music group that had been on the bus all day with us set up with sound mixer, violin and guitar on one side of the crater and sang a variety of music ranging from opera (the guy was a professional opera singer at the Mersin State Opera) to Frank Sinatra. The remarkable aspect of this performance was that singing out across the “crater” the acoustics were fantastic to the sound was pretty good. We had a fish lunch at a restaurant on the waters edge in a small bay so this combined with the musical performance made up for what could have been a very dull day.

Muscians playing across the natural amphitheatre

The city of Mersin is surrounded by what appears to be fertile agricultural land turned over to cropping – wheat, tomatoes etc. There is a huge shopping mall called the Forum that houses every major brand one can imagine – so we did spend an afternoon there, and also got to experience another Turkish haircut. No flame throwers around like last year but the result is an equally short haircut – a No 1 cut all over would have been much quicker.

A bit more about the rally – there are 18 French boats against 16 English boats with 3 each from NZ and Australia (out of 71 boats all up). The antipodean boats all get on well but additionally we are making some very good friends on other boats from Norway, Austria and France particularly as well as several of the English boats. As the rally progresses everyone gets into the swing of it, you get to know most of the other people and natural friendships evolve. One of the Norway boats is a 17.5 metre Najad (Ko Ko) and a lovely yacht - probably the nicest boat in the rally and they are doing the ARC later this year. There are 4 Hanse’s in the fleet (us, a 411, a 430 and a 370), 3 Najad’s, 3 cats,3 Beneteau First 44’s but Jeanneau definitely have the biggest representation. Only a couple of Bavaria’s interestingly enough.

We did catch a bit of culture while in port as Mersin was hosting its annual international music festival. We were able to get tickets for a show entitled “Jazzing Flamenco” that was stunning. The brochure describes it as a striking marriage of flamenco and the tango danced (and sung) to jazz, blues and soul music. A great show and well worth seeing – it has played at the Montreal Jazz festival and all around Europe. Just think of six gorgeous Spanish women in a variety of costumes during the show, six equally stunning guys (or so I was told), one spanish singer and great musicians with wonderful music (e.g. Rhapsody in Blue etc) and you will get the general picture. Watch out the Irish dance shows!

A long lunch day - the Mersin version of a kebab comes in 1,2 or 3 metre lengths

The enforced extra day in Mersin with temperatures in the 30’s did not do much for us so we did explore the old town thoroughly, had the subdued rally dinner referred to in the last posting and awaited news from the rally organisers. Eventually we were told on Tuesday that the rally committee had made arrangements with the appropriate and numerous officials for us to all clear out of Turkey at Mersin. This all happened over a two day period and our passports and ships papers were returned to us late afternoon Wednesday 2 June and then there was a mad exodus from the marina. We certainly got the sense that everyone was very keen to get out to sea to the 94 mile overnight passage to Lattakia in Syria. As the Iskendreum stop was cancelled we had an extra day at Mersin and we will have two extra days at Lattakia.

The town of Tarsus is nearby and one we were planning to visit from Iskenderum but that of course did not happen. Tarsus is where St. Paul was born around 2,000 years ago. Jo left us here to return to NZ and caught the plane back to Istanbul from Adana about an hours drive from Mersin. Iskenderum was also part of Syria until 1937 when Turkey decided to take over that region.

We eventually pulled out of port into a nice SW of 12 knots at around 1900 hrs on Wednesday 2^nd June, quickly got the sails up and were off chasing the fleet. We were pulling them all back quickly after a couple of hours (on the wind) and I reckon we are the fastest boat in the fleet – that is until the wind started to ease and at that stage fellow NZ boat, Rumpus being well sailed by Rupert and Kristen got up to us but not ahead as we all started to wallow in the left over slop. Well 94 mils to go and yet more diesel – the only consolation is that diesel prices start to drop dramatically – e.g. Turkey 3.20 a litre, Lebanon 0.56 a litre. We are told not to take on diesel in Syria or Egypt because of suspect quality.

We arrived with the first group 6 boats into Lattakia after calling up the Syrian navy who escorted us in at around 1000 hrs on the morning of Thursday 3 June after an uneventful crossing. Four boats were disabled coming into the port with rope around propellers with gearbox damage to Godspeed which is sufficiently serious they will be lucky to be able to continue the rally. The port of Lattakia is the major port for Syria and again the boat harbour is in one corner around 6 k’s out of town. Another pretty average place and again we are stern anchored and bow in between Norwegian boat Ko Ko and Australian boat Koza. We are in this position after going aground in very soft mud so had to anchor off a bit. Several other boats also went aground so we did not have that experience to ourselves. Good security though with guards at the gate.